The Traditional Children's Games of England Scotland
& Ireland In Dictionary Form - Volume 1

With Tunes(sheet music), Singing-rhymes(lyrics), Methods Of Playing with diagrams and illustrations.

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	NINE HOLES	4i3
	sight. The keeper has to replace the tin before looking for the boys. If, after that, he can spy a boy, that boy must come out and stand by the ring. When another boy is spied, he endeavours to reach the ring before the keeper does so, and kick out the tin. If he is successful, any one of the boys who is standing by, having been previously spied, is released from the keeper, and again hides. The object of the keeper is to suc­cessfully spy all the boys. When this is accomplished the last boy becomes the keeper. — Earls Heaton, Yorks. (Herbert Hardy). See "Mount the Tin." Nine Holes Nine round holes are made in the ground, and a ball aimed at them from a certain distance; or the holes are made in a board with a number over each, through one of which the ball has to pass.—Forby's Vocabulary. "A rural game," says Nares, "played by making nine holes in the ground, in the angles and sides of a square, and plac­ing stones and other things upon, according to certain rules." Moor (Suffolk Words and Phrases) says: " This is, I believe, accurate as far as it goes, of our Suffolk game. A hole in the middle is necessary." In Norfolk, Holloway (Diet. Prov.) says that nine round holes are made in the ground, and a ball aimed at them from a certain distance. A second game is played with a board having nine holes, through one of which the ball must pass. Nares quotes several authors to show the antiquity of the game. He shows that the " Nine Men's Morris" of our ancestors was but another name for " Nine Holes." Nine, a favourite and mysterious number everywhere, prevails in games. Strutt (Sports, p. 384) also describes the game as played in two ways—a game with bowling marbles at a wooden bridge ; and another game, also with marbles, in which four, five, or six holes, and sometimes more, are made in the ground at a dis­tance from each other, and the business of every one of the players is to bowl a marble, by a regular succession, into all the holes, and he who completes in the fewest bowls obtains
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